For several months, an AI-generated DJ has been hosting a show on a major Australian radio station — and hardly anyone noticed. The program, Workdays with Thy, airs on Sydney’s CADA station and features a four-hour mix of hip hop, R&B, and pop. Despite the regular broadcasts, there was no public indication that “Thy,” the host, wasn’t a real person.

According to The Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald, the station’s parent company, ARN Media, eventually confirmed that Thy is powered by artificial intelligence. The AI voice is modeled after a real employee in ARN’s finance department and was created using ElevenLabs’ voice generation technology. The first mention of this came from the tech newsletter The Carpet.

Interestingly, neither CADA’s website nor the show itself disclosed that Thy is not human. Instead, the program is promoted as being curated by music experts, with Thy guiding listeners through rising chart hits.

This case isn’t isolated. In January, Microsoft aired an ad for the Surface line created with AI, but only revealed that detail later.

Workdays with Thy appeared on CADA’s site in November 2024 and reportedly reaches an audience of over 72,000. The use of AI without disclosure has drawn criticism. Teresa Lim, vice president of the Australian Association of Voice Actors, publicly condemned ARN for the lack of transparency. “Australian listeners deserve honesty,” she wrote on LinkedIn, “not to be misled into trusting a fake voice they assume is real.”

ARN’s CEO, Ciaran Davis, acknowledged the situation, telling the Financial Review, “We’re trying to understand what’s real and what’s not. What we’ve learned is the power of the announcers we have.”

CADA is not alone in exploring AI voices. Stations in Portland, Oregon, and even Sirius XM have experimented with AI DJs. Last year, a Polish station replaced journalists with AI hosts — a move it reversed after public backlash.

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